Voltron arrives on PSN and XBLA this week

THQ's Voltron: Defender of the Universe hits download services this week. The game should be available for $10 on PSN by the time you read this, and will reach XBLA tomorrow at 800 MSP. The title's developed by Behavior Interactive, whose previous Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime should have provided ample practice for adapting beloved 1980s properties into contemporary online co-op titles. Here's a trailer...

Now that you're all firmly divided into “glowing with nostalgia” or “squinting with confusion,” maybe the more refined among you can tell the young folks about how Voltron was a pretty big deal in the 1980s. The cartoon and game alike focus on a team of young pilots and their color-coded spacecraft, all of which are also robotic lions, and which can be combined into one gigantic fighting robot, the titular Voltron. So it's essentially Transformers plus Power Rangers by way of Macross, all bathed in a 1980s neon glow and suffused with some sort of message about teamwork and/or the brutal annihilation of interplanetary evil.

The game, which features clips and key moments from the cartoon, looks to follow the show's formula pretty faithfully: rove about shooting things in your lions for a while, then join up to form Voltron and smack some skyscraper-sized monsters about. The challenge of five-player co-op play as Voltron ought to add a unique element to the title. If nothing else, it'll answer the question of, “how was Voltron controlled anyway?” (Turns out the answer's likely to be “clumsily, with swearing.”)